


To See Clearly

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Career Change, F/M, Family, Married Couple, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3930253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She’s a practical woman, but tonight it feels like the stars are aligned for her. For them.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	To See Clearly

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A “Hollander’s Woods” (7 x 23) post-ep.

 

* * *

 

“To see clearly is poetry, 

prophecy and religion 

all in one.”

— John Ruskin

 

* * *

 

 

She needs to change. The dress and everything that makes it happen aren’t exactly practical for a crime scene.  And though she doesn’t mind this—the hair and the jewelry and the hemline she has to keep an eye on—any other night, she’d still be eager enough for it. Trousers and the clean lines of a button down with a blazer over the top. 

 

But this is his night. and she’s thought more than once since her phone buzzed on the table that she should apologize. That she should have asked if he wanted to skip it and keep the party going with Connelly and whomever. Maybe even sounded Gates out to see if someone else could take this one. It’s _his_ night.

 

But he’s already here. She knows, even before the scrape of the garbage can on tile as he drags it in front of the locker room door. Even before the warmth of his body behind hers and deft fingers at her zipper. 

 

She knows before the first press of his lips to the nape of her neck apology for this comes from  a different kind of math. It’s a set of manners and work–life balance and whatever it is that regular people do. It doesn’t apply here. It’s never applied, entwined in the hundred ways their two lives are. 

 

“Thought you might want some help,” he murmurs over the drawn-out percussion of delicate metal teeth parting.   


“Help,” she echoes, turning as the fabric hisses down her arms and over her hips. The cool air hits her skin, a counterpoint to the heat his fingers raise. Both make her shiver. All of it makes her shiver. 

 

She’s draped against him, his height, inch for inch, in shoes she’ll never, ever be able to wear with anything else. She kisses him. His hands roam her body, but all of it gives way to something sweet and unexpected and innocent—as innocent as any scene can be with one of the players suddenly in nothing but heart-stoppingly expensive lingerie, anyway. 

 

“None of that, Detective.” He kisses her all through the words. It’s thorough and heartfelt, but sweet. As if he’s hell bent on _chastity_ of all things. 

 

“Really, Castle? _None_ of it?” She dips a knee, flexing her thigh under his palm, making him take more of her weight and pressing her hips closer to his in the process. 

 

“None,” he says. It’s tight. Strained, but he kisses her firmly. A doorstep kiss in the porch light that comes with a glance up and to the side, like her dad might be watching. A first-date kiss, despite the soundless, not-so-innocent groan as he tugs his body reluctantly from hers. 

 

He opens a respectable distance between them before he risks stooping to gather up the dress pooled around her ankles. Takes a breath to steel himself before he offers her one hand and slides the other behind her knee to help her step free of the tangle of fabric. 

 

“Castle!” She huffs at him, disbelieving. Yes. There’s a body and a crime scene and all that. There’s the job, like always. But it’s his night and he followed her here. 

 

He shakes his head and grins at the floor—at the dress draped carefully over one arm—not risking a look up at her. 

 

“Caesar’s . . . Caesar,” he corrects himself. That catches him. It tickles him enough that his head snaps up. His face is alight with the same awed smile he’s been giving her for hours and hours already. Since the swings, and the pride is still pouring out of him. “Caesar _must_ be above . . . locker room shenanigans”

 

He straightens. He kisses the back of the hand he’s still holding, entirely too chivalrous. He  moves away from her. He _actually_ moves away, and she stares as he spins the dial on her locker.

 

“And Caesar’s wife?” She’s close behind him. She’s there in strides too quick for him to register. Sliding her hands under the untucked tails of his shirt long before he can do anything about it.  

 

He startles. She gets the satisfaction of that and his whole body going rigid when her nails drag a slow arc between navel and waistband. But he keeps it together. Garbage can or no garbage can. Zipper and hissing fabric. His lips on her skin or not. He keeps it together. He turns into her body, slow and deliberate. He pushes her street clothes into her arms and steps past her. 

 

“I’ll make a wonderful Calpurnia.” He slides the garbage can aside. “Mother will be so proud.” 

 

* * *

 

 

She’s a practical woman, even after all this time. Even after seven years of him doing his damnedest to get her to see ghosts and Bigfoot and the universe at work in her everyday life. She’s a practical woman, but tonight it feels like the stars are aligned for her. For them. 

 

It’s a night interrupted. One that comes with the promise of an early morning and the pressing need to be sharp, and still the feeling stays with her. 

 

She thinks about the champagne on ice at home. The private celebration that’ll have to wait, and she’s sorry for it. She thinks again about apologies—about _sorry_ and what she’ll promise to make it up to him, and that part’s fun. But she looks at him, busy at her desk, and she’s not exactly sorry. Because this is part of it. The stars aligning for them. 

 

He smiles wide. He turns in the middle of something when he hears her step behind him. He’s still in his tux, the loose ends of his tie dangling and the first few buttons of his shirt open. It calls to her. The whole tableau, but the tie especially. A thing made by her hands, unmade by his. Shaped by the two of them into this—a perfect image before her. 

 

“You about ready?” 

 

He asks, but he’s already decided for her. For them both. He’s zipping up the garment bag with her dress in it. Dangling one of her heels from one finger with his eyebrow lifted, and it has the desired effect. It takes her right back to the moment in the locker room. 

 

_Shenanigans denied,_ she thinks to herself and laughs. She goes to him. Kisses him in the abandoned bullpen and whispers. “Just about.” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You think you know.” 

 

She’s still panting, slick with sweat and half on top of him. He’d had a split of champagne stashed, of course, and he’d talked her into it. A celebration not quite deferred. 

 

He’d talked her into it, and in the unguarded moment just after she undoes him entirely, she sees it. The secret, thrumming smile he has, and it’s not just for him. He’s satisfied. Proud of the award and prepared to be a little insufferable about it, but it’s not just for him. Not the smile or the champagne or their skin still cooling.  

 

“Know what?” he asks the ceiling when there’s breath enough for it. “I know lots, Beckett.” He reaches for her hip, but he’s undone and clumsy and she’s something close to indignant. 

 

“You think I’ve made a decision.” She clambers up on her elbows, one planted on his chest just where it doesn’t quite hurt, but it’s damned uncomfortable. 

 

“Of course you have.” He takes by the biceps and flips them both to their sides, nose to nose. He kisses the tip of her chin. “You just don’t know what it is yet.” 

 

It tugs at something inside her. The simple faith underscoring every word. Simple faith in her, but the universe, too, and she wishes she could be sure. She’d like to be sure if just for now. Their night, with the stars aligned. 

 

“But you think you do?” 

 

She tips her head back to study him. More than that. To take from him some of that serenity. He studies her right back, not shying from the light when he sees she’s what she’s looking for. The certainty that comes easier to him. He studies her right back, and cracks a grin before too long.

 

“I know I do.” He worms one hand under her body and reaches the other around to pull her to him. He winds his calves around hers and makes her squirm with how tight he’s holding her. He rumbles in her ear. “ _Richard Castle lives in New York with his wife, Senator Beckett . . ._ ”

 

_“Doyle?”_ She breaks his hold on her. She snatches up a pillow and whacks him with it, head and shoulders and everywhere as he tries to writhe away. “The most important decision of my career and you’re quoting a crazy person at me?” 

 

She’s on her knees, casting about for a pillow to replace the one he’s managed to wrestle from her. But he reaches up and there’s a weight to the sweep of his fingers over her cheek. A quiet solemnity that stills her. 

 

“Not Doyle,” he says, then shrugs a little. “Not really—but he _was_ right about this.” He reaches for her left hand with his and twists the diamond she hasn’t taken off yet. The light his it and the gold of his band, too. “I’m not sure because of him, though. I’m sure because you have an excellent brain and a wonderful heart.” His voice drops to a thick whisper at that. “And you _know_ the right thing to do. The rest is just . . . clearing the way.” 

 

She drops on to him, clumsy in the hurry to be close. To brush aside pillows and the defensive angle of elbow and knee. 

 

“Clearing the way,” she repeats, the words muffled by her lips against his chest. She’s hiding her face against his skin. She’s just . . . hiding. “It’s gonna be . . . hard.” 

 

“Understatement.” He laughs into her hair. “Either way. Campaign or Captain. Understatement.” 

 

“Or?” It’s a shaky little syllable. A sharp swing back when she’d just thought she’d come to center.  

 

“And?” He reaches for the bedside lamp, casting an exaggerated frown down at her as he snaps it off. “Fine, Greedy. Captain _and_ Senator.” He shifts her to one side of him. “But I don’t know _when_ you’re going to have time to get started on those three kids.” 

 

She laughs as he fusses to get the pillow just right under her head. She feels their bodies fall into their welcome familiar tangle. She feels the stars align. 

 

“Don’t worry about me, Castle.” She stretches up. She lands a kiss somewhere on his cheek, another gliding down his jaw, his neck, his shoulder, warm and perfect under her lips. “You just get started on that serious literature.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading. Not terribly original, I’m sure, but the bebes wanted me to write them happy.


End file.
